Friday, February 15, 2008

I Love the Smell of Burning Ape Guts in the Morning

"A famous linguist once said... that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history... that "Cellar Door" is the most beautiful."

This is from a speech given by Drew Barrymore’s character in the film Donnie Darko. The original quote was attributed to the American writer H.L.Mencken, who supposedly claimed a Chinese student particularly liked the phrase. Some people say the student was actually Italian, while others think that the historian Jacques Barzun learnt from one of his own Japanese students.

But at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter who came up with the claim, because "Cellar Door" is not the most beautiful phrase in the English language. This is:

"Exploding Baboons".

Isn’t that spicy? It rolls off your tongue like a ball-bag covered in Tabasco. If somebody gave me a Valentines Day with the simple inscription "Exploding Baboons", I would fall in love with them on the spot. And I’d spend all day and all night punching their privates with my tongue.

I guess you’re all wondering how one comes across an extravagant phrase such as "Exploding Baboons". Well, it comes from this quote by Canadian Stage actor Daniel Okulitch:

"One of the things I'm doing in Paris is being fitted for the prosthetics for my gradual transformation [into the fly creature]. And there are telepods and smoke and teleportation and videos of exploding baboons."

Did you spot it at the end of the quote? EXPLODING BABOONS. Gorgeous.

Okulitch is of course talking about his role as Seth Brundle, in the Musical adaptation of David Cronenberg's The Fly. That’s an Effin’ fantastic idea for a musical, I would definitely go watch that.

While we are on the topic of musicals (as I don’t think it will be a topic I return to soon) allow me to recount this anecdote for your pleasure:

It was midnight on a Friday back in 2004 when I was still a fresh young man about London, and I had just left a tube train to enter Victoria Station. Of course I was off my guts from a full day’s drinking, as no anecdote is worth telling unless alcohol is involved.

I got to the stair case leading out of the station, and for reasons I couldn’t tell you now, started stomping up the steps while singing "It’s a Hard Knock Life" from the musical Annie. I got about halfway up the stairs, when some Swedish back parker I’d never seen before in my life, impulsively ran up and joined me by my side as we scaled the stair-case stomping together in tune:

'Steada treated, We get tricked!

'Steada kisses, We get kicked!

It's the hard-knock life!

I have no idea how I knew the lyrics, nor how this Swedish dude did either. But for just one glorious moment, my new Scandinavian friend and I transversed the line between "drunken antics" and "impromptu street theatre". And although I have seen the Sistene Chapel, the Eiffel Tower and every tourist trap in between, it’s drunken escapades like this that will always be my fondest European memories.